Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.
The blessings of God are bestowed on people and nations that follow His commands. His judgment takes many forms, like natural disasters and the deprivation of personal freedoms. Today, a look at more forms of judgment that are very evident in America now.
Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, is God's judgment the same thing as His wrath? Well Dave, I would clarify it by saying this, wrath almost appears to be one of the attributes of God.
God's judgment, well those judgments are particular judgments that are meted out in various ways at various times. But what we must do in our culture is to make sure that we have a biblical view of God, we emphasize His love, but we also emphasize His justice and yes, His wrath. I've written a book entitled We Will Not Be Silenced. One of the chapters is entitled Villify, Villify, Villify. I emphasize in this chapter what is happening thanks to the internet, how people are being marginalized and vilified, oftentimes in very extreme ways.
We are in a nation that has a great deal of anger. The question is, how do we stand against it and represent Christ well? For a gift of any amount, we're making this book available for you. Here's what you can do, go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. At the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you that contact info again. For now, let us listen. Now what we learn in scripture is that if you're going to close your ears to the truth, God is going to make sure that your ears are closed as a judgment. Isaiah chapter 6 verses 9 and 10, he said, go and tell this people, he's talking to Isaiah, be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused, make their ears dull, close their eyes, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. And God says in the New Testament, Satan has blinded the minds of those who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine onto them. God says, you don't want to hear my word, I'll give you blindness and dull hearing so that you won't hear it. It's a judgment from me. Boy, we have to pause there, don't we? A number of years ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate, famous for Russian literature and his description of life under communism, giving a lecture at Harvard University and warned the students about America's pursuit of pleasure to the neglect of God and says that the student body should turn to God and he was booed off the stage. We will not hear it.
Eyes and ears dull of hearing. God in his providence has given me a good friend in London, England. He's a pastor there and this past week I was at a conference and we were at the conference together so we spent many hours talking about Europe and London. A letter was sent from the Willow Creek Association to the churches of London that says we want to meet with all of the super churches. We would call them in America mega churches.
You know who the letter was sent to? Anyone whose congregation was 250 people or above. I tell you, I never have seen so many people as when we were in London a few years ago down the streets, just rivers and rivers of people, just rivers and rivers and you say, oh God, is there no end to the people in London? Yet a large evangelical church is one that has 250 members. This is the country that sent missionaries. This is the country that used to have huge Bible conferences. This is the country that produced some of the finest and the biggest and the best preachers like Charles Haddon Spurgeon during the 1800s and God says, I have given you a spirit of slumber and your eyes are closed and your ears are stopped up because you would not hear and that is London today and England and it's no better in Europe. My wife and I have been there and we go into all the great cathedrals.
Why? Because we're interested in architecture and we're interested in saying that we were in in these places but you show up Sunday and you have a few hundred people at the most down in front and the whole churches are empty and teams of people going to the beach or enjoying themselves doing other things. They have no ears to hear, none at all and that is a picture of the United States of America in a couple generations unless we repent. I think of France. You know I can't prove this scripturally but it seems to me that when Louis XIV and by the way if you've never been to Versailles, my wife and I were there last summer, what an exciting place to visit. I could tell you all about Versailles but the sermon says keep going. Oh the Hall of Mirrors. Unbelievable.
We'll leave it alone. But you go to France. When Louis XIV expelled the Huguenots, many of them went to Germany and other countries, 20,000 of them, and he took away their jobs and he persecuted them until they all left. It almost, the Huguenots of course were believing Christians converted through the ministry of people like John Kelvin who trained ministers to go to France to preach the gospel. Did you know that at one time there were something like 2,000 congregations in France and there was a belief that France might actually embrace the whole Reformation. But thanks to others like Louis XIV, he expelled them all, he persecuted them all. It just seems as if today from what missionaries in France tell me, it's as if God just went and pulled the blind. And France today is one of the most secular countries of the world, turning against its heritage and Christianity because they do not have ears to hear God's word. God says that's a judgment for turning from me.
We must hurry. The oppression of families, that's number five. I choose only one verse from the book of Deuteronomy. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation and you will wear out your eyes, watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. God of course is referring to the captivities.
You have the Assyrian captivity and you have the Babylonian captivity when the people were hauled off to other countries because of their idolatry. God says that's a judgment and the final judgment really is the smashing of families. Do you believe that America is under God's judgment today? Listen to the cries of little boys and little girls crying for mommy, crying for daddy because mommy and daddy are divorced and they can't get along and daddy has found somebody he likes better than mommy. God says part of the judgment is the fact that there are infants and children who are crying and there'll be nothing that you as a parent can do about it. It is the judgment of God upon that sin. Now I know that there are hundreds of you here, I'm sure, and certainly listening who probably are divorced and divorce is not some great sin as if to say it's in a category by itself and I also believe that oftentimes there is an innocent party, no question about it. I'm just telling you that as we embrace divorce as a way of life, as our nation is steeped in immorality which is almost always the cause of divorce, not always but almost always, God says you're going to pay for it by your children and they will grow up into adults and they will marry and they will take all of their sense of rejection and their baggage into their marriage and so on and on it goes. It's a judgment against sin. One more and that's number six which is the withholding of blessing. It says in Jeremiah chapter 5 verse 25, your wrongdoings have kept these away, your sins have deprived you of good. This is one judgment we'll never be able to point to and the reason is because we have no idea of the blessings that God might have given to us had we not turned from him and stopped up our ears and closed our eyes and gone on our merry way. Let me give you some principles three or four as I try to conclude. First, all these judgments draw attention to God. That's the whole point. God doesn't give us these things so that we might be mad at him and say well if that's the kind of God you are then I won't have anything to do with you.
God is trying to put his arms around us. These judgments have two different sides. One side is that they are retributive.
I hope I put the emphasis on the right syllable there. They are retributive. They are judgments because of sin. They're the natural consequences of sin.
There's a second aspect and that is corrective. God says to you and to me and to the nation, don't you see these judgments? Don't you see that you need me?
What am I going to have to put you through before you call on me and say hey we give up. We surrender the weapons of a rebel. God says these judgments remind you or should that you need me. Second, I've already emphasized that we cannot judge a nation by evaluating the number of its judgments because this is a different era. But isn't it interesting that China, let's take that, a nation that was deprived of its rights, I find this fascinating, under communism the church in China grew more and greater than the church in Taiwan which supposedly has freedom.
So do you see how God can even take something which appears to be a negative, namely the restriction of freedom and he can actually use it to strengthen the church to be what the church should be and you can go to China today and there are estimates that there are between 30 and 50 million genuine believers in a country where preaching the gospel is forbidden. So let's not look down on other countries. Let's just simply look at ourselves and see that we cannot judge others, even especially natural disasters, but I've already commented on that and so we must hurry. Third, God begins judgment with his own people.
Now listen to this very carefully. God begins judgment with his own people. I deliberately chose verses of scripture that we have just covered that all have to do with the nation of Israel or Judah, God's chosen people. Now there are judgments in the Old Testament regarding pagan nations but I deliberately didn't deal with those. These are God's people. The Bible says in the New Testament that judgment must begin at the house of God.
It begins with the best people God has and when they are brought to repentance through that you see God begins to flow out and to bless others. That's God's way of doing things but God is much more concerned you see about the sins that are in the church than he is the sins that are in the world. We should expect the world to have its sins. I mean why not?
Birds fly don't they? But among believers that's the problem. You say well does God ever judge churches? Well last night I just decided to do a quick read of the seven churches of Revelation, the letters that Jesus wrote to these churches. Ephesus, God says because you've left your first love you will cease to exist as a church. I'd say that's a pretty severe judgment which was fulfilled because there is no church in Ephesus today. Pergamum, you will find that the Lord will fight against those who are immoral the Bible says. Piotare, those who commit adultery will suffer intensely God says as part of my judgment. Sardis, the Lord will come as a thief to judge those whose deeds are incomplete.
Wow I'm reading that and saying what's it like to have incomplete deeds? God says I've not found them complete and I'm going to come to you. Laodicea, God will spew out of his mouth the church because of its lukewarmness. Of course God judges us. Now for us as believers there's no ultimate judgment.
We're going to be in heaven if we've received the gift of eternal life because we come under the protection of Christ's righteousness. But in terms of God's discipline, yes indeed God does discipline churches. I know one church that is going through a church split. Those are awful things to endure and I hear about them all the time, all the time. We have to pray that at the Moody Church God continues to grant us unity which we've experienced so wonderfully.
Oh just pray that God will grant that. But part of it frankly is that I believe that, and this is just a human judgment now, that in this case that I'm thinking about there has been some serious sin on the part of some of the people in the church who are petty and who want their way and who are doing this and and it's a complicated situation. But the simple fact is that it may be a judgment. I remember somebody saying of a particular church that every pastor that comes the church splits and it always splits along the same lines.
You have the same families on this side of the fence as you have on this side of the fence. It has systemic problems that have never been resolved because the repentance on the part of the congregation has been superficial. And God says that's your judgment finally and last. The greater the grace, the greater the grace, the greater the future judgment for refusing it.
The greater the grace, the greater the future judgment for refusing it. You see God has granted to some countries tremendous blessings. I think of the United States of America.
I just can't get my mind around it when you compare it to other countries. I mean here we have Bibles everywhere. We have churches that are still open that preach the truth. We've got television programs. We've got books. We've got all kinds of ways to get the message out.
Every kind of seminar, every kind of ministry that you can possibly imagine it's happening and a lot of it is good. And in the face of that as a nation we're closing our ears. We're taking down the fences and we're going our own way. And God says the greater the grace and has not this country been graced, the greater the grace, the greater the judgment. Now let me talk to you as an individual person.
Now I'm not talking about America, I'm talking about you. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? If God in his grace sent Jesus to die for us so that we could be reconciled to God? If God in his grace has led us and to give us an understanding of the truths of his word, if we neglect it in the face of such light how shall we escape? If I had the time I would prove to you that the judgment is going to be much greater for those who lived under grace than it ever was under the law.
Under the law oftentimes immediate judgment. You touched the ark and you were dropped dead and people think well that's serious. Ah not nearly as serious as eternal judgment in hell for those who stand in the presence of the living Christ and say no to him. How do you my friend plan to escape if you've neglected the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness of God offered in the crucified Savior?
There is no escape. Would you join me as we pray? Our Father we just want to confess to you that we have we've turned from tremendous, tremendous light and opportunity. Thank you for all the good things that you are doing among us for the people who still love you and pray and witness and but Father we've squandered. Help us as a nation, help us as a church, help us as moody church to be the people that we should be knowing that you too could judge us and in some ways you may be if we take it all for granted.
Live by the flesh and do our own thing. Now if God's talked to you today would you just talk to God now wherever you are? So what did God say to you today? What has he said to you today? Father if you've spoken keep speaking don't let us alone until we've dealt with the issues that you brought to our attention. Give us no rest, no peace. We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. My friend this is Pastor Luther. I hope that if God has spoken to you, you do deal with God on whatever issue he has brought to your attention. We're living at a time when God is being redefined where we are discussing God in such ways that oftentimes we emphasize only his love. What we must do is to understand God, his relationship to the nations, and his relationship to us. I've written a book entitled We Will Not Be Silenced. I wrote the book to give us courage to help us to understand the issues and how we should respond to them.
Very quickly I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy. You can go to rtwoffer.com, that's rtwoffer.com, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. The book We Will Not Be Silenced can be yours. It's time now for you to ask Pastor Luther a question about the Bible or the Christian life. We're warned in the Bible to expect a rise of evil as the times of the end draw near.
One of our listeners wonders about this and puts his concern this way. If, as you say, America is already under God's judgment, how much worse is it going to get before it gets better? Also, what are some steps we Christians can take within our churches to change the culture? Thank you so much for asking that question, and the answer is yes, I do believe that America is under judgment. In the Old Testament, God told Israel that when they were under judgment, that their families would be destroyed.
You'd have children who would be begging for their mothers and mothers for their children, and today across America our families are being destroyed. They're being destroyed from within because of immorality. They're being destroyed because of the temptations that are without, and we are paying for our sins, and those consequences are part of God's judgment. So yes, I think we are under judgment. What shall we do about it? First of all, we need to be committed to our families.
Let's begin there. We need to recognize that our children have to walk with God, and we need to have a priority in terms of our children and our grandchildren, which really speaks to me because Rebecca and I have seven grandchildren, and so that's where it begins. We have to live holy lives so that our witness is strong and uncompromised in the midst of this generation.
We need to witness to our faith, to let other people know about the beauty and the glory of Jesus and what he did for us. We need to be strong in that regard. We need to be willing to suffer for our faith, and that of course is going to begin to happen and has already happened as the state continues to encroach upon the church and as secularism comes to its logical conclusions in the realm of morals.
So all of these things are necessary. We can also take hope from other examples. People like Bonhoeffer modeled the struggle of a believer in the midst of a nation that has forgotten God.
We need to read the biographies of the martyrs to be encouraged. So all these things are part of the answer in terms of our witness in a generation that has lost its way. Some wise counsel from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you once again, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Erwin Lutzer has concluded Understanding the Wrath of God, another in a six-part series of messages on God and the nations. Next time, we as Americans turn our gaze at ourselves to hear a sobering message on God and the United States. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
